BURLINGTON, Vt. – The University of Maine women’s basketball team has experienced its share of ups and downs during the 2000-01 basketball season.

It has all come down to today, when coach Sharon Versyp’s fourth-seeded Black Bears open the America East Championship with a noon quarterfinal game against No. 5 Hartford at the University of Vermont’s Patrick Gym.

The Bears take a 12-15 record, including a 9-9 conference mark, into the matchup against coach Jennifer Rizzotti’s Hawks (14-13, 9-9). While UMaine has struggled a bit of late, losing three of its last four games, the team remains optimistic.

“It is a fresh start,” said junior co-captain Tracy Guerrette of St. Agatha. “The biggest thing is keeping our confidence and playing together; not getting frustrated; utilizing our strengths as a team; executing.”

UMaine has beaten seven of the nine other teams in the tournament at least once this season. The challenge for the Bears is to recapture the chemistry and energy they discovered while winning seven of eight games starting in the middle of January.

“With any team in the conference, it’s whoever shows up to play,” said co-captain Kizzy Lopez, the Bears’ only senior. “I think we can play against anyone.”

This UMaine team isn’t dealing with the kind of pressure its predecessors endured. The Bears aren’t expected to win it all, but they know they are capable of making a run at the league title.

“It appears that the energy and the positiveness and the upbeat style is back,” Versyp said of the team’s response to the Hartford loss. “My job right now is to mentally elevate them and keep them fresh and their job is to go out and get the job done.”

The Bears split with the Hawks this season, losing 66-51 a week ago at Hartford. Rizzotti said while Hartford may have some momentum, it boils down to a single game.

Execution is the key.

“We both have seen each other’s weaknesses, so it’s just a matter of who’s going to exploit them,” said the former NCAA Player of the Year out of UConn. “It’s the time of the year where it doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past. It just matters if you play well or if you play poorly that day.”

The Bears, who beat Hartford 71-53 Jan. 13 at Orono, must deal with a couple of critical elements. UMaine must execute patiently on the offensive end, even in the face of Hartford’s tight man-to-man defense, and the Bears have to play stingy defense without fouling too often.

“One [key] is staying poised under their guard pressure, because obviously they’re going to full-court pressure us for 40 minutes and they’re going to get in our faces defensively,” Guerrette said.

UMaine also wants to maintain a slow, controlled pace and keep Hartford from taking advantage of its quickness and depth.

“I think that we need to control the tempo,” Versyp said. “We need to make sure that we don’t let them run on us a lot, that we are in control.”

However, the Bears do want to aggressively attack the basket on offense and try to get to the foul line.

UMaine also will look to Lopez to set the pace. Even though the Bears have demonstrated exceptional offensive balance this season, they’re 2-9 when Lopez failed to score in double figures.

Lopez and sophomore forward Anna James are the only two UMaine players who possess considerable postseason experience. Their on-court leadership may be a critical factor.

“We know if we really pull things together, we can come out with a positive outcome for us,” Lopez said. “I think it’s more important than anything to stay in the moment and make sure that we deal with now.”

The No. 4 seed is UMaine’s lowest in the conference tournament since Joanne Palombo-McCallie’s 6-20 team went in seeded seventh in 1993. The Bears finished as league runners-up that year.